“I have just found an Imperial moth worm on a maple-tree. Will you please look on one of the small apple-trees in the orchard near the place where the arbor used to be, and on that row of small apple-trees, there is a tree on which I put a Cecropia worm for myself, which may be found by its effects under the tree. I think a great deal of it or I wouldn’t write about it. Have you found any worms yet? I wish that I was there to look about for them, or I wish that there was somebody there who would look after them for me, for it is such a splendid place for them. The boys are leaving from here, very fast, and we all will leave in 13 days more.... “P. S. That worm that I told you about on the apple-tree, if very large, must be taken off and put into a box with fresh apple leaves every day; if small, do the same.” A letter which he wrote in 1865 bears witness to the trait which his teacher had already noted--his careful observation. He made pen-and-ink drawings to make clear what flower he was trying to identify, which was plainly the false foxglove. “I have been out in several places and have stuck in as much as ten stakes in different places where those beautiful scarlet or crimson lilies grow and when the stalk has gone I will take them up. Saturday I intend to go out in search of some more. There are plenty of them, and sometimes I see them two or three on one stalk. “Do you know what the large trumpet-creeper is that has very large flowers of a red color? One used to grow at the east end of the back piazza up against the side of the house. Well, there is a flower of the same shape and kind of a beautiful yellow color, but it grows like a primrose; on one stalk there are over 20 flowers of about an inch and a half in length. The tops of the buds seem to be lapped over each other, and when there are blossoms they look very pretty. I am going to try and get it for you, but I don’t know whether it has seed or not. I suppose not. Nevertheless, I’ll try and get it for you, for it is very pretty. “In a garden up here there is a kind of ‘Columbine,’ very large, of two kinds, purple and white and _very large_. I am welcome to all the seed that I want. I don’t know whether you want any or not, but nevertheless I’ll get you a lot. “Here I must stop. I remain “Your aff. son WILLIE.” The boy was fortunate in his mother, whose fine nature, trained tastes, and Christian spirit moved and moulded the best there was in him. Her letters to the little pupil are models of maternal sympathy, and reflect very vividly the boy’s strong passion for living things and the study of them. One of her characteristic messages went to him in 1862, and reveals her own interest in the pursuits which were delighting her children and which were destined to mean so much to the boy she was writing to: